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Crazy/Nerdy Computer Art Installations
Gernot Ziegler writes "After having read a report on the fusion of Art and Technology, I somehow ended up on Perry Hoberman's page. I don't know this guy, but I've always been fascinated by techno art, and these ones are clearly intriguing.
There is the Workaholic, a pendulum with a bar code scanner over a carpet with bar codes and an attached projector that overlays images on the carpet, or the ZOMBIAC (Zone Of Monitor-Based Inter-Amnesiac Contact) that lures the visitors into thinking that the machines react to them directly. You might also want to have a look at this weird auction (that's where I got this link from) ! :)"
DeadTech
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Users can attempt to steer the pendulum, but it will always remain somewhat unpredictable. At all times, the scanner/pendulum works as a TOOL that operates on the image below. Sometimes the pendulum acts like a kind of CHISEL or ROUTER, cutting grooves through images to expose other images hidden below. Repeated passes will widen these grooves until certain images become completely exposed and dislodged. At this point the pendulum becomes a kind of MAGNET, dragging bits of images along its path. At other times the pendulum acts as a kind of RADAR, updating the parts of the image that it swings over, or a VACUUM CLEANER, sucking up images; a distorting LENS; a BRUSH, a BROOM, and so on. These various functions are reinforced by the use of appropriate sound effects
.. even after looking at the pics, I can't decipher what the hell they're talking about.. let alone why the usual use of CAPS in the text..
The revolution will not be televised. It won't be on a friggin blog either
Check out this band - it consists of old 386DX computer having a SB... :-D
The music is quite fun, as it consists of classics rendered in the adlib-style sounds and top of that the SB speech synthesizer is singing the vocals.
As can be seen in the pages, they have done many "live concerts" which could be defined also quite nice computer art installations - just the computer sitting on street, playing out its music.
--
I think the image is projected onto the floor. It just makes a flat color and then chisels another color into it with different brushes and effects until its a big mess like a winamp vis plugin I dunno though, it doesn't explain well
check out the work of Mary Flanagan and her phage program...It trolls your hardrive and does random stuff with the data it finds...
www.maryflanagan.com
In the old days, art copied things - but as photography came about, the necessity of that dropped away, and art began to *comment* on things.
One thing that art looooves to do is to comment on art itself. (basically one generation of art comments on the previous generation: e.g. post-modernism art being mostly comments on the modernism, etc (for the nit-pickers - i really forgot which "ism" comments on modern-ism, so if the fact is a little off, don't flame, ja?))
What it really boils down to is that for many years now, art has been very seclusive stuff - stuff commenting on previous stuff which were themselves comments on ever earlier stuff. For the non artist, besides the above as a background, one very, very important word of caution - unless you intend to keep track of what is the current subject of comment, and understand all the crap that came before that, I'd seriously recommend against spending money on the stuff. Besides very few items that eventually ends up famous for famous' sake (Mona-Lisa, for example, is viewed to be "famous because of it's fame" - that's another thing I got out of the class, btw), all you will be receiving in the end is a comment without any context to go with it, kinda like spending money for a single comment of slashdot, without knowledge of all its beowulf cluster of running jokes, previous stories with evil bits set, and you bought it just because it was moderated highly.
anyway, for decoration purposes, there are many decorating art you get at even malls these days. let me repeat: don't ever spend money on what *real* artist produces, unless you are very sure of what you are doing. (this in response to the auction site)
not to mention, most of the real art nowadays are crap anyways...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Just the thing to keep script kiddies interest piqued.
:-)
Oh did I say script kiddies - I must have been thinking slashdotniks
I never really understood the pricing for a lot of art, I mean I can understand why a really nice picture might be worth a couple hundred dollars -- prints cost money, mounting them costs money and the artists needs to make some money on it. I could easily see paying a couple hundred or more for a picture I really like. Some of these though are ridiculous. Like this print, it says retail price $1200!!! Besides the fact that I can't imagine anybody actually wanting to own that picture I just don't understand where that value comes from. Anybody could make a picture of a Windows XP dialog box saying something like that... it's not even an original idea! Things like that are put up on the web all the time! This one's just as bad and it's $2000.
That's ridiculous.
This is an interesting fact which I learnt the other week.
The word "Techno" actually MEANS "Art"
Therefore Technology is infact "The study of art." I was distraught when I learnt this, since I am an engineering student and despise those lowly arts students...
I am not stubborn. I am right!
From boingboing.net which frequently links to interesting computer art there is this
O> ( \ X 8===D
The ZOMBIAC is nowhere near as cool as zombo.com!
Anything is possible at zombo.com!
The only limit is yourself!
If all art is a comment on something else, then what I want to know is what the hell is this commenting on?
Story here!
Another way technology plays into poetry is Aleatory Poetry. I experimented with this a bit in this dynamic poem, revelation to pi.
by Arthur Ganson
It is hard to get a handle on the what we mean by "art", let alone "computer art". Some say that art is a representation of the metaphysical. Yet, the very term "metaphysics" is repudiated by many feminist philosophers, especially those engaged primarily with twentieth century French and German philosophy, because it connotes a pretension to ahistorical universalism, as if philosophical accounts of the real could transcend the whole cloth of our cultural, historical, and embodied rootedness. Perhaps rather than "computer art" we should use "computer craft" allowing for broader and less austere possibilities.
Interesting... I don't have a disdain for the arts (art itself that is) but arts classes at universities. AKA the "Bachelor of Attendance." I fail to see the relevance of most of the drivel that exists in those classes. But I think that my greatest complaint with an arts student happened in my first year. In the first fortnight to be precise. At this time I was doing 30+ hours a week at uni, and this bloke was complaining about all of the hours he was going to be spending in class. It transpired that he was an arts student, and had to do a whole 10 hours a week. He dropped a class because he just could not take the pressure of all that work. That is probably where my disdain for the arts comes from. That was really off topic
P.S. Leonardo DaVinci, one of the greatest artists ever to have existed in the world, and one of the most intelligent and insightful, was infact a millitary engineer by profession.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
..what someone will pay.
Nothing more, nothing less. If you like good art, there are better places to look - chances are if you ask around you can find someone who paints who would be flattered if you wanted one of their pictures.
..don't panic
Everyone knows that when presented with an inexplicable piece of "art", one must immediately feign understanding, lest he be lumped with the great mass of society who can't understand either. You are, of course, better than the rest of society, yes? And if you can't "understand" art exhibitions, you might as well be an animal or a redneck or a cracker! If you don't want to be one of those, make up an explanation of why you think this artwork is deep and immensely thoughtful. And better yet, publish this opinion where others can see it, so that ye may better be recognized at parties as the guy who understood the piece of art that nobody else could appreciate!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It looks like this could be used as a random (as opposed to pseudorandom) number generator, or as random seeds for a pseudorandom number generator. Something similar was done by pointing a webcam at a lava lamp. Random unpredictability is important for things like encryption.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Bah. So hate that guy, don't generalize about the people working and educating those in the field. My girlfriend is a recently-graduated Art History major, with a secondary focus in studio art, specifically sculpture. She worked HARD for her degree, at a state school, in the art department...and got a good education under professors making a pittance and working in one of the most underfunded departments in the US. (Colorado state school art depts.)
I've seen her put more hours toward a sculpture piece than I ever put toward a program in the CS curriculum at the same school, one that is reasonably well-respected. I had the same disdain, until I found that most CS students were rock-stupid slackers, and most art students were rock-stupid slackers...
You'll find lazy people everywhere. Keep that in mind.
http://www.somalounge.net/obsolotron.php
Neat idea.
- David Rokeby
- Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau
- Simon Penny
Who are yours?Ignore the poster. Everyone knows that Bold Marauder is a relentless pedophile who cannot keep his hands off of boyscouts. Of course he likes to hide behind a thin veneer of ultra-patriotic nationalism and likes to spew forth comments brimming with right wing christian predjudice, don't let that fool you! He loves the boy anus and will do anything to get it!
He's been posting elsewhere in this discussion.
The pendulum is the mouse pointer. The screen is a photo opened by The Gimp.
The tool that the pointer represents changes depending on the state of the image. Sometimes it erases a layer and sometimes it paints a layer etc...
STOP SUCKING COCK
The caps indicate functions that the "machine" performs in response to the bar codes it reads. The pendulum reads the bar codes, and these control what the overhead projector displays.
ANIMUSIC is more than worth checking out. The current DVD and CD is arranged very nicely and the eye candy is amazing. There is going to be a 16:9 and 5.1 (hoping for DTS) release in the early first quarter of 2004.
Rand of course being an entirely unoriginal pseudo-philosopher ripped mind-body of descartes.
I think her reaction to all this would be somewhat around the reaction I got once trying to bring her up in a philosophy tute... Something like "Thats nice shayne, but Ayn Rand is not a philosopher, she was a cult leader."
Trust me, I dont think the serious world of art academics'd give a fuck what a half baked angerhead like rand would say.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
art is cool
if you sail on over to lowtech.org you can see a group in the UK using redundant technology both in art and in society.
the group a2rt (www.a2rt.org) are also starting up something similar as well.
The reasoning behind using lowtech computers in art and social projects was given by James Walbank the founder of the lowtech project in this speech to an arts conference with the theme of revolution. James correctly pointed out that you can't have a revolution with a price tag of over £1000.
favourite pieces include redundant array, and the video wall that was reprised in even better fashion here at fort lux
Art is what you make it, found art is what you find and what you make it, lowtech art is finding art in skips.
sparkes
blog and junk
Are these the same 'art academics' who sell paintings made out of elephant feces, or the ones who dunk crosses in urine in the name of 'art'?
Maybe if they did give a , modern art would n't be in the elitist, inaccessible shambles that it is today.
They should be stopped!
The only thing that should be dunked in urine is YOU, you un-american, terrorist supporting, pedophile.
Can't even write FUCK, eh? God says nay to writing FUCK? Right-wing piece of shit. Maybe someday there'll be a law where no one will be allowed to say, write, or even think the word FUCK. That will be a great day for Amerikkka. Christian freak.
I remember, years ago, when I went along to the AIMIA awards with a friend, on the Gold Coast in Australia. The two of us wandered slowly around the space in white paint-protection suits (very high tech) with Powerbooks running PixelToy mounted to our chests. People could speak into the screens and see the psychedelic screen change. Fun, and hanging out in the green room with the other weirdos was a laugh.
Oh, and someone else gave me money to develop an early version of this thing identikit into what you can see today. All done with QuickTime VR object movies. Full experience from the main page at funwithstuff.com.
it's not about the karma, it's about the whuffie
The link in the parent post is a little out of date. This is the correct link, which has up-to-date concert listings and CD's.
Check out scene.org viewing tips.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Another approach to computer art, which recognizes its roots in computer culture as well as in "art" - is software art. Lots of cool stuff over at runme.org... and read_me, an entire festival devoted to software art, is coming up in a couple weeks in Helsinki..
Sorry, a computer is not "the embodiment of reason and logic". According to Merriam-Webster, a computer is "a programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data." A more accurate definition of a computer is a device that acts as a Turing Machine, which is an abstract description of a general purpose procedure execution device. See here
As you can see, the definition of a computer has nothing to do with the type of data it acts upon. I'm sure you've listened to music, a form of art, on your computer. How does this "defile" your computer?
Or are you just a troll?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
This project from the runme.org page looks pretty cool. There's also a movie of the software in action.
But I have to say, the comment I'm replying to is not all that different in it's extremism and intolerance from the pretty horrid response it has already evoked.
Some modern art is elitist and inaccessible (though it's obviously enjoyable for somebody, otherwise it wouldn't have an audience). Other modern art is a reaction against that. My university invites artists to display their art in a room set aside for the purpose. I often went to view these exhibits. A lot of them were pretty extreme, and a lot of them I didn't like. They were still interesting, even though I wouldn't hang it in my own living room. One of them in particular stuck in my mind though. I forget the name of the artist, but he set up a canvas and painted all day. He made each painting fairly quickly and sold them for $5 a piece. They were enjoyable, if unsophisticated pieces. His entire philosophy is that he wanted to be able to reach more people with art.
There are modern artists who are also trying to reach joe schmoe.
"A lot" is two words. You wouldn't say "alittle", would you?
As scary as it is, some do...
my favorite quote describing Perry Hoberman's installation, entitled "systems maintenance":
the goal is continually thwarted by the ease with which a single user can re-introduce disorder into the system.
- a.c.
Users may apply forces to this pendulum while it follows laws of physics and gravitation, but it's still unpredictable.
What part of a pendulum with forces acting on it is anything but calculatable to a highschool sophomore in a physics class?
Just because some hippy artist isn't able to figure out that the pendulum is going to move away from him when he pushes it DOESN'T make in unpredictable.
Now, if it would suddenly transform into a small cactus with the ability to alter colors on a small wood working shop in the bronx - that would be unpredictable.
"For my next art project I have used the curious attractive force known as gravity. Watch as I let these objects go, from rest! They seem to accelerate rather unpredictably. Some go down. Others go downer. Some might even go up!"
interaccess in Toronto is an amazing gallery.
The Seemen and SRL in San Francisco will blow your ass up.
xraylab in Seattle/Chicago/New York does some great interactive work.
Norm White has been kicking art/tech ass for since before you were born.
David Rokeby's work is totally amazing too.
Beige Programming Ensemble in Chicago/St. Louis/New York can make your Atari/C64 do backflips.
and for some amazing reading... Stephen Wilsons information arts book has no comparison.
rhizome.org is a pretty good site for all things art/tech (esp. web art)
And for validation by the mainstream art world check out the whitney's artport.
Heil Sig! -Rob
You are grossly misinterpreting Rand's views. First of all, she is completely against any sort of mind body dichotomy. You need to go back and reread. The mind body dichotomy has to do with the mind's relation to reality. She stands by, and rightfully so, that the mind cannot exist on it's own without a body, as in some primary consciousness or any lower kinds of "witch doctors". Her examples of the witch doctors and the Attilas were there to show the two extremes of philosophical bankruptcy which are derived from the mind body dichotomy. The witch doctors are the mind without the body, thinking they can manipulate reality with only their mind, and the Attilas are the body without the mind being only able to use physical force to get what they want. Her point is that neither of these types are right and because of that neither can succeed on their own.
As for the rest of your post, there are many computer users, especially slashdot readers, that are intelligent people capable of creating complex code. This was what Rand was all about, using your mind to rationally create. While a computer is a physical tool, so is a pencil and paper that an author could use to create a novel.
But yes, Rand would agree that art made from dead computers, or toasters, or blenders, or anything like that isn't even close to being actual art at all.
While you had the right idea that Rand is against modern art, you need to check your understanding before you go any deeper than that.
...when an online auction site goes down because of a /.ing?
I'm learning programing and System Administration on the job after getting a Masters in sculpture. They're really rather similar fields.
First, some notes for those that have an out-dated or tv-inspired understanding of the art world:
Most artists are really very down to earth. Much of what they make is not, but the people themselves are not flaky astrologer hippies. (like most hackers. vs. their television counterparts.)
Many museum and gallery directors are rather flaky. (like your boss.)
Art is largely self-referential. Artists make art knowing art history for people that know art history.
Art is a lot of problem solving - where the artist generates and solves the problem.
Art has been around for centuries and was changed radically by the camera.
When hacking is five hundred years old, it will seem a lot more like art that it does even now. Already, an experienced coder is not impressed by some newbie's new chat program (like mine) that introduces no new functionality to the genre.
But if that chat app made comments on what everyone said, maybe that would be new and interesting. If it added something to the genre of chat apps while commenting on chatting, it would be self referential, new, and interesting. And regular users all over the world would call it elitist, weird and stupid, claiming it was just designed to make them look ignorant.
Right now, programming is already looking a lot like art. New guys mock Cobol programmers the same way new art school students mock figure painters. No one is interested in my chat program for the same reasons I'm not interested in looking at paintings of mountains - I've seen it a million times before, there's nothing new here.
Translation: You don't understand art, therefore there is nothing to understand.
I'm sick of it. The 20th century was hijacked by the art critics and lead everyone into believing that the crap that Pollock and Picasso made was "art".
Take a good, long look at this website http://www.artrenewal.org/index.html
It used to take years and years of training, copying from the masters, learning space and form, learning perspective etc etc. But when you see people paying $100,000 for a blank canvas because some critic said it was important, then it's time for us to stand up and say enough is enough!
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Loser.
It takes all types to make the world go around. I'm growing bored of the elitest attitude that so many geeks sport twoards people who move towards a fine arts or a liberal arts field. Lazy and geek are not mutually exclusive just as it is possible for people who aren't in an engineering field to actually be *gasp* intelligent. Sorry for the rant. It's not directed at anyone specifically, just an overall attitude I've seen lately.
And it is people like you that make this world an awful place. You can only gain knowledge by looking at the world from multiple perspectives, and you can only gain wisdom by looking at the world holistically.
Get off it, the emperor has no clothes.
To someone with a third-grade math education, differential equations look like gibberish. It's called an education. Look into getting one.
Vilot.com This guy is a nut (consulted with him on a job a couple of years back), but he is one talented artist. Does all of his work in the digital domain then prints to canvas. Definitely worth checking out his work and his "digital" art philosophy.
When you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
repr. Gr. sevmo-, combining form of sOEvmg art, occurring in technology, etc.; techno-co"mmercial, -eco"nomic adjs.; also in the following terms: "technocomplex Archæol. (see quot. 1968). "technofear = technophobia below. "technofreak [freak n.1 4c], an enthusiast for technology or for the technical complexities of a particular piece of equipment; hence techno-"freakish a. technographic a. technography (-"Qgr@fI) [-graphy], the description of the arts, forming the preliminary stage of technology (technology 1); hence tech"nographer, one versed in technography; technographic (-"gr&fIk) a. techno-"manager, a person who is both a technologist and a manager; hence %techno-mana"gerial a. techno"mania, a mania for technology; hence techno"maniac. %techno-me"chanic a. (nonce-wd.), pertaining to mechanical art (in quot. absol. as n.). technonomy (-"Qn@mI) [-nomy], the practical application of the principles of the arts, forming the final stage of technology; hence technonomic (-"nQmIk) a. (Cent. Dict. 1891). "technophile, one who favours technology. techno"phobia, fear of technology; so "technophobe, a person who fears technology. tech"nopolis [-polis], a society dominated by technology; hence techno"politan a. "technosphere [-sphere], the technological aspect of human activity. "technostress orig. U.S., (psychosomatic illness caused by) stress arising from working in an environment dominated by (esp. computer) technology; hence "technostressed a., affected by technostress. "technostructure, a group of technologists or technical experts that controls the workings of industry or government. techno"tronic a. = technetronic a.